


World Combat Tournament

by Karwin



Category: Original Work
Genre: Combat, Multiple Power Systems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-02 04:22:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20620421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karwin/pseuds/Karwin
Summary: The World Combat Tournament, a display of strength and intelligence, displaying the skills from those all across the planet (and even beyond it). 64 fighters, countless forms of power, but only one victor. Who will it be?





	1. Chapter 1

The World Combat Tournament. It’s the most well known event world wide, one of those common knowledges that everyone knows even if they weren’t particularly interested in it themselves, like the concept of weather or the idea of games.

It wasn’t always that way though. At its creation by a group of the world’s most powerful fighters back in the year of 1500, it was a very private affair. Only a select few teachers of martial arts around the world knew of the tournament’s existence, and would send their students to the island where it was help to further their training.

Originally, the battles took place in the center of a secluded island on a 13x13 foot stone battlefield. Fights could go on as long as they needed to, so long as no weapons were used and no one was permanently injured or killed. The prize for having won back then was just the title itself of ‘the strongest fighter in the world’, as well as a special belt with an insignia on it to prove that they had won. 

Needless to say, the tournament has changed over the years. Granted, it had taken its sweet time doing so. It had stayed more or less the same for the better part of six centuries. Then, in the year 2102, things started to change.

A city boy, one not belonging to any recognized dojo or martial arts group of any of the ‘honorable’ kinds, entered the world combat tournament.

It was an unheard of event. Competitors of the world combat tournament were always members of martial arts schools or dojos. People didn’t just waltz in off the streets of New York and compete in the fighting. But now, one had.

There was thought to simply deny him entry to the fighting, but doing so violated the spirit of the tournament, partly because they were impressed he had been able to find and reach the island alone with no information but the word he had from a friend of a friend, but mostly because they wanted to show him not to mess with their traditional events. They allowed him to compete.

And that was when things changed. Because this boy, named Charles Rallen, or just Charlie as he constantly insisted, won every fight he competed in, winning the whole tournament within a matter of forty-eight hours. He was a bit annoyed that the prize was nothing extravagant, but the title was one he wore proudly.

The word spread of this fast. There was a large increase of combatants at the next tournament, and even more at the next. Now that people knew about it, people were interested. It got so popular that it was first televised in 2123. And it only got bigger and better from there.

The battlefield was changed into 25x25 feet, and large stands put in so people could watch the battles live in person. Combatants didn’t need to pay to enter, but spectators did. The money from tickets went towards a cash prize for the victor of the tournament, and that only attracted more people.

Finally, the issue of re-evaluating the rules of the tournament arose. The only rules before hand had been ‘show up on time, don’t use weapons, don’t kill anyone’. But with all the changes that had happened, both to the tournament and to the world itself, things were more complicated. 

What qualified as a weapon? How many fighters could enter before it was just too many? After the discovery of organic magic in 2076 and the other natural powers like chakra and aura in 2090, where was the line?

So, in 2130, a meeting was held to officially iron out the rules once and for all. It was a difficult, tedious, slog of a debate involving more than thirty sources. It was long and arduous and it turned violent at least three times. 

Then, finally, after a full month, the rules were decided on.

They were as such: The tournament would, from now on, be held once every five years so that people had time to train for it. People could start heading to the island a month before the fights started, and all would be accepted until the deadline at the end of the month.

To deal with the issue of overcrowding, a preliminary round was set up to trim the herd down to just thirty-two combatants, whose battles would be televised in the arena. 

The preliminary matches had a five hour time limit, the battles in the arena had a twenty-four hour time limit, and the final battle would have no time limit, ending when and only when someone won the battle (such as the battle between Benjamin ‘Big Ben’ Calimain and Vladamir Petrivok in 2135, the longest in history at thirtysix hours straight.)

Weapons were still prohibited, and weapons would be defined as any external tool or force used to harm, heal or otherwise affect any combatant. All things that came naturally to the user’s body, such as magic, chu, chakra, etc, were allowed.

A combatant needed to be eighteen years of age to qualify at all, and if anyone was murdered in the battle, the one responsible would be disqualified and arrested accordingly.

And now we come to the current world combat tournament of the year 2145. Let’s take a look at the combatants shall we?


	2. Chapter 2

Damon woke up in his hut at the summit of the mountain. He went out for a run like he always did in the morning, he would hunt for his breakfast along the way, perhaps finding a deer that would make up all three of his meals for the day.

Damon had moved up to the hut from the village at the mountain’s base years ago to begin training for the world combat tournament. 

He hunted his own food, lived near a stream for fresh water, and if he ever needed anything else, he would make a quick trip back down to the village to sell the skins and fangs from mountain wolves in exchange for supplies he needed to keep going.

That was how he had gotten his cloak. While wearing it, Damon weighed almost three times more than he actually did. That, matched with mountain environment, with its thin air and mountainous terrain, had made for incredible training over the last few years. 

Strength, speed, durability, all of it had been increased far beyond the normal level. He wasn’t terribly agile, nor did he have any formal training in a specific martial art, but he had learned ways to compensate for that.

Damon had developed a special ability during his training in the mountains. It was hard learned, but it was extremely useful now that he had it. Damon had gained the power to control his own density. Aside from the immediate obvious ability to densen himself to guard against attacks, but he could also use it to put more power behind his own strikes.

What’s more, he could lower his density to increase his speed and make himself so light he could basically float through the air. He had learned a variety of ways to apply this in combat, having ramped up his training after having learned it. 

His thinking was that if he was strong enough to smash through a solid wall of stone without using his power, than he would be strong enough with it to defeat any and all enemies he was confronted with.

And he desperately needed that. Damon himself had little use for money or popularity, as evidenced by how little he was inconvenienced by his moving up to the summit of the mountains and his plans to remain living up there even after the world combat tournament was over and done with. 

No, he planned to put the money he won from the tournament towards fixing up the mountain village. His old home had been in a state of disrepair for as long as he could remember, scared by the massive war that had ravaged the world years prior.

Because the village was so remote and produced very little of note for the rest of the world, most people paid it no mind, and it had been left up there to rot, only barely surviving this long by being out of the way of most bandits and having decent protection from natural disaster. 

Even with the village still being on the map, it was in a state of poverty and suffering, one that Damon hoped to fix with the prize money.

This was what kept Damon training so hard. He knew he would need something more to keep himself from being overwhelmed by the other fighters in the tournament. He began working on possible combination attacks to utilize his power, but the most powerful of his attacks, his special attack, was called the Meteor Drop.

He had created the attack during a battle against a small pack of wolves in the mountains. The attack involved jumping into the air, combining his own natural strength and ability to lower his density to send himself flying high into the air before turning so he was facing down at the opponent with both fists out. 

He then increased his density to far, far more than any normal person, essentially turning himself into a human ballistic missile on his descent.

It wasn’t necessarily an accurate attack, but it hardly needed to be. Even if he didn’t hit his target directly, when he hit the ground, anything within about forty feet would get hit with the shockwave of the impact. 

He nearly broke the sound barrier on his way down, and he had needed to practice on the wolves for a long time to know how to use it to a non-lethal degree, most wolves turning from solids to liquids when hit with all the force the attack packed.

And if it didn’t work against a stronger foe, Damon could also crank it up even further.

(

* * *

)

Jeremy Pitris had always lived near the ocean, but when now a days he woke up falling into it from the top of a cliff. He tended to not remember where he was when he first woke up, and would wonder out the door, forgetting that directly outside his door was a vertical drop into the ocean below. 

His half-asleep brain just never seemed to remember that he was in training. He knew it wasn’t for lack of importance, if he failed at the world combat tournament, Kel, his sister would be out of luck as far as her schooling went, but Jeremy refused to have that. He would win, and his sister’s future would be bright.

Most all of Jeremy’s training centered around the ocean. His strength, flexibility, speed, endurance, and agility were all highly increased from when he had started. His durability wasn’t much to speak of, and when he had realized this, he had begun focusing a little more of his training on evasion and dealing quick, powerful blows.

Aside from that, his presence at the ocean was practically a genetic trait, something he had only realized after his first year of training. As it happened, the reason he and his family were so fascinated with the ocean was that their auras were all collectively linked to it.

Aura was one of the many metaphysical energies that the human body was capable of generating. Like most, aura usually needed to be unlocked through diligent training and couldn’t be done on accident, but Jeremy had been born with his ocean and water based aura unlocked, a result of three generations of family living near the water.

The aura had a variety of uses. He could effectively power up his other skills by channelling aura energy through attacks or movements, or even just focus it around his skin like armor. The catch: the energy of his aura could run out, and he’d be left exhausted and weak with no way to gain more through any means but waiting.

But that wasn’t all Jeremy could do with his aura. While he couldn’t form physical objects with his aura energy, nor could he summon and fire bolts of pure aura power, he could use the aura to send his mind into a different state of consciousness.

Jeremy had taken to calling this power Ocean Eyes, as it gave him the sensation of being completely submerged in water no matter where he was. While in this state, he was unaware of most external factors, immune to distractions, aware of himself and the target, and precious little else, if anything else at all.

He was faster, stronger, and by relying on his aura and naturally reflexes, much smarter as well while using Ocean Eyes. Jeremy was quite confident with his current skills, but kept going, continuing to train his skills. Recently, he had taken to sparring against the local champions, the sharks.

Jeremy knew his folks and friends back home wouldn’t believe him, but by his count, he had fought twenty sharks and beaten twelve, earning a different scar from the eight he had lost to. It was during the tenth of his shark battles that he had created his special attack. He even named it after the event, referring to the attack as the Shark Strike.   
The attack involved grabbing an enemy and throwing them high into the air. 

Using his aura, he would jump up at them, striking them hard when he collided with them. The strike would break or rupture nearly anything in the general area that Jeremy hit, so he needed to be careful of where he landed his attack. 

He was unsure how to land properly after the attack, and was also unaware that, while using the attack, his aura wrapped around him created an illusion of a massive shark seen by those who saw the attack.

But even with the skill’s flaws, he knew it was strong enough to take him to the top of the charts at the world combat tournament, and he refused to fail his little sister.

(

* * *

)

William woke with a grumble, brushing the sand off of his face before he rose. The heat was as agitating as it always was. He reached for the water and his wrappings. He’d need water and to cover his skin before he exited the tent.

William had been in the desert for many years now, though it had never been by choice. He had only started training for the World Combat Tournament about six years ago, and had been training hard ever since. His time in the arena would come soon now, just a few more months.

Not many people knew much about William. The only people who really even knew he existed were the citizens of the desert city he visited once a week to re-supply his stock of food and water. 

No one was sure where he’d come from, but they could tell from his attitude that he was not a native to this area, and he seemed to hate the sandy landscape with a passion. Some had tried to question him on where he came from, or how he always had the money to buy his supplies, but no one ever got a satisfying answer from him.

Every once in awhile some of the citizens would get cheeky and either start a fight with him, or question why he didn’t just use all the money he seemed to have to just buy his way out of the desert. These people were usually rushed to get medical assistance with broken bones, bruises, or on days when William was in a particularly bad mood, severe burns.

This had gotten some of the desert people discussing the possibility of William being some kind of desert spirit or elemental entity with the power over fire. In truth, William’s speed, power, and apparent ability to burn others with just a touch all came from his ki training.

Ki was one of the metaphysical powers that people could learn, like aura or chakra. Unlike others, ki was tied directly to the user’s physical power, and vice versa. With combat training not common in the desert town, none of them recognized the use of ki, and assumed his powers were something mystical.

William didn’t care much about the thoughts of the desert people. He needed to focus on his training. Said training had three parts for every day.

The first part of the day’s training was centered around physical training, running up and down the sand downs, digging massive sand pits with his bare hands, and going through other various forms of physical activity. 

It was tedious work, especially with the cloths he had to keep draped over his body to prevent his skin from burning, but it was necessary. The more his physical state improved, the more his ki improved.

The second part of his training involved removing the robes he used to avoid burning, sitting down in the sand, and meditating under the sun. This improved the ki directly, letting it circulate through his body to help it flow through his muscles. 

This training was less tedious, but this was because William was less aware of it. Meditation sent William’s mind into a different state, making it easy for him to ignore how much his skin was being damaged by the sun.

William used a sav he purchased from the village to repair the damage to his skin. It wasn’t perfectly, but it kept him from staying permanently burned.

The final part of his training took place at night, when the blistering heat was traded for bitter cold. This way he could practice his ki abilities. In truth, he only knew two ki techniques, but that was two more than most. Both abilities were the result of his extended stay in the desert, and both required a few seconds of focus.

The first was one William called the Desert Winds, a power that allowed him to let out a heat wave, making whatever area he was in almost instantly as hot as the desert with the sun directly above. Even the icy desert nightfall was turned burning hot for miles by this ability.

Then there was William’s special attack, the Thermal Knock-Out. William was able to use his ki to draw in all the heat from the area, whether he had produced it with his other power or not, into his body, either in one of his hands or one of his feet. 

All the heat would be released as power whenever his fist or foot collided with something, knocking out almost any target immediately. 

The rush of heat out of the body caused quite a bit of damage to whatever part of the body was being used for it. Even with this drawback, William was certain that he could use this power to win the tournament and finally get out of this god forsaken desert.

(

* * *

)

Cobir woke up half asleep and hit his head on the metal bar above him. He grumbled in pain from it, but he supposed it was better this way, as the hit always reminded him of what he needed to do. 

After the pain began to fade, he reached up and pulled himself onto the bar, balancing on it as he made his way outside the tent towards the forest.

Cobir could easily get food from simply going to his parent’s tent and asking for it, but he felt that it didn’t count if he didn’t get his own food, which required scaling up at least fifty feet of tree in order to find even the smallest of the fruit. The radiation from the war of 2100 had really beefed up the trees he thought.

When Cobir had been young and didn’t understand the concept of chakra, he had thought that his powers were the result of the leftover radiation in the dense forest. 

His parents had tried to explain to him that the radiation in the forest had all dissipated by now, as they wouldn’t be able to research its after effects if it hadn’t, but up until about six years ago when his parents had bought a book that explained chakra, Cobir had assumed that he was some sort of radioactive superhero. 

Possibly a result of having read too many comic books when he was younger.

But regardless of where his powers came from, they would never have developed the way they had if not for Cobir’s staying with his parents deep in the forest for their research. 

It had been them who taught him to meditate, though as a kid it was a method to keep him occupied for long periods of time while they worked, they hadn’t expected him to actually tap into his body’s chakra, chakra being one of the metaphysical powers humans could learn naturally.

Like aura, chakra tended to latch onto something in the environment. Rather than latch onto the plants though, it latched onto the thing that he and his parents interacted with the most during their research: animals.

It had started by accident. Every week his parents would get a new batch of animals from the thousands of different kinds that inhabited this once great city turned vast forest so they could study the way they had adapted to the environment. And Cobir was there, watching the animals for months on end until one day, his chakra abilities kicked in.

The energy allowed him to mimic the actions and behavior of animals he had observed. He could replicate any ability from any animal after seeing it only once or twice, which led to his parents showing him more and more animals to test what the limits of his chakra abilities were.

At first, the powers he could mimic were limited by his body. If the animal was too different from different from the human body type, having wings or horns, etc, he couldn’t copy the power. After some training though, he found a way around it.

By harnessing his chakra and forcing it to the outside of his body, Cobir was able to even mimic animal body parts, forming scorpion tails, bat wings, bear claws, wolf paws, and even fish gills, anything really. The limbs were made of pure chakra, transparent and only stable for half a minute or so before vanishing. 

His goal for his powers was to be able to form an entire chakra animal body and fight within it like some kind of beast armor, but currently there was no such luck with using an ability like that, but his special attack did come close to it. 

It instantly drained his body of all built up chakra, leaving him weak and vulnerable to attack, but in exchange it released a veritable stampede of animals made of chakra, all of which charged forward to destroy whatever was in front of Cobir. 

He called it the Jungle Rush, and the fifty foot clearing that his family currently lived in had been formed the first time he had practiced the attack.

Cobir was confident that he could at the very least make it to the final rounds, perhaps even win the World Combat Tournament if he kept training. 

Said training involved meditating to bolster his chakra, practicing basic combat techniques, practicing the Jungle Rush at least once a day, studying and sometimes even sparring with the animals his parents were researching, and going through an obstacle course along the highest top of the trees, which always, without fail, made him feel like Tarzan.

In all honesty, it wasn’t like Cobir needed the prize money. His family was bordering on wealthy already, but it wasn’t like he wanted to be riding on his parent’s work his whole life. 

Thinking about what he would do if he did win, he decided to spent one third of it to fund the rest of his parent’s research, a third of it preserve the forest so it would still be around when/if he had grand kids, and a third to start some kind of business of his own.

But he was getting ahead of himself. Right now, he needed to focus on training.


	3. Chapter 3

Molly Truncae woke up at dawn, precisely at dawn as she always did, only ever off by more than a few seconds thanks to her being able to sense when there was sunlight hitting the tree tops around her, and began her morning routine. She ate her breakfast, consisting mostly of energy she absorbed through the plants she controlled and energy directly from the sunlight itself, rested in her green cloak, bathed, then went off to begin her training.

Molly was a mage, and while she only actually knew a small handful of spells, her natural magic had been strong since her childhood, and had only gotten stronger. She had been naturally stronger than the other magic users she had known. That is to say, she had been until she quit her schooling.

She wasn’t sure how long she spent meditating each day. Once she got into the center of her favorite clearing, levitating with her eyes closed, legs crossed, and her magic stretching out like a muscle and seeping down into the ground like roots, her mind connected with the plant-life around her and time just sorta lost all real meaning for her. She knew she spent the majority of the day meditating though, as when she stopped she was hungry and the sun was in a much different position.

Next she would practice her spells. As previously stated, she only knew a few spells, only knowing a few of the basics: level two levitation, short ranged teleportation, minor illusions, low power energy bolts, and temporary invisibility. She had also learned a few spells that worked in tandem with her plant magic, letting her form her plants into limbs, use her plant sense, draw energy from the plants, and heal herself with power from them.

Each of these spells had taken her a long time to learn, and she still hadn’t actually mastered any of them. She still worked on them, knowing they’d be useful, but she didn’t spend too much time on them.

Once spell testing was done with, Molly moved on to her favorite type of training: training her instinctive magic. This mostly just involved seeing how much she could summon and control her plants until she got too tired and ran out of magical energy entirely, having to rest.

Using magic and casting spells we two separate things. Using magic was easy, it just flowed from the user to whatever they needing it to go to, and if practiced well, could cause a variety of effects. Spell casting was the act of giving the magic a purpose before letting it out, forcing it to obey the order all the way through without dissipating. Objectively, neither was better than the other, but many still argued over it.

Molly, for example, was of the belief that reflexive, instinctive magic was far superior, saying that it was the closest humans got to wielding raw magic. This belief could have stemmed from her being of the half of all magic users born with their magic instead of the half who had to learn it, as the latter rarely ever had any reflexive magic. It could also have come from her poor casting abilities and lack of having ever gone to a formal magic academy. Regardless, she was set in her belief.

When her magic finally did run out for the time, she would switch to physical training. In all honesty, she probably spent less time training her body than she did her casting, but her body was still strong, able to leave dents and gashes in the trees with quick punches and kicks. 

She primarily focused on making herself quicker, training her agility and flexibility. Her body was built for it already, and if she did run out of magic in a fight, she would be fighting defensively until she built it back up.

After the physical training, Molly would rest for awhile before getting back up and heading deeper into the forest to practice fighting with some of the local beasts. She usually did battle with boars, bears, wolves, and big cats, but occasionally came across something more powerful such as giant snakes, goblins, lycanthropes, spirits, and once even a manticore.

The last of those had been particularly exciting for her, as it had been the first time she had been able to practice her special attack on something other than a training dummy. 

It started with a quick jab to the throat to knock the target back, after which Molly summoned four sets of roots to lock around their ankles and wrists to hold them in place. Molly would launch herself into the air with a combination of levitation and summoning a tree beneath her to fire her upwards, and would summon a set of vines from her hands that would connect to the ground behind the target. Finally, she would retract the vines, sling-shooting herself at the target at full force with both feet out.

If all went well, the Forest Barrage, as she called it, would knock out any target instantly. If it went wrong, it would likely shatter both her legs on impact.

Molly went through this daily routine for years, counting down the days until she would go to the World Combat Tournament. She wasn’t sure what she would do if she won, but considering the money she’d get, she supposed she could do anything she wanted to. Even if she wouldn’t admit though, she already knew what she would really do if she won. With that kind of money, she could finally afford to go to a real magic academy, and be more than just the crazy hippie forest mage that the magic community saw her as.  
(

* * *

)   
Baagh Parna didn’t wake up really, one needed to actually be asleep at some point. But Baagh didn’t sleep, just went into a magical meditation state, floating cross legged over a small mountain summit spring. Upon returning to full consciousness, he floated down into the stream to clean and re-invigorate himself.

The lanky, dark skinned mage wasn’t wearing much more than plain rags around his waist, so he wasn’t worried about his clothing getting wet. After a few minutes submerged, he levitated back up and floated away. It was time to begin the day’s training.

Baagh had been to a magic academy in his home of Agra, but he had never chosen an actual school of magic; school referring to the particular type of magic one would choose to specify in. He knew that he wanted to focus on elemental magic, but he was indecisive on which element. Luckily, he hadn’t had to make the decision. As the top of his class, he had been granted a four year leave of absence to train for the World Combat Tournament.

His love of elemental magic had been a major factor in his choice of where to train. After some research, he found a mountain range containing quite a few different elemental environments thanks to the presence of elemental spirits living in different area in the mountains. When he had first arrived, Baagh had acted as the student to the different elemental spirits, but now, four years later, he had learned all he could, and now spent his days sparring with the different spirits.

He started his day battling the water spirit, who resided in the waterfall flowing over the far north side of the mountains. She was kind and wise, having taught Baage far more about the world and himself than just how to apply water magic to it. She was also quite beautiful, with pale blue skin, a soft regal voice, and ocean blue hair that moved so much like water, Baagh had once believed her hair was just made of water. This may have been a factor in him always visiting her first, as well as his efforts to never actually hurt her, just battling her until she was too worn out to go on.

Next he would visit the ice spirit, who lived in the frozen tundra of the mountains that were directly opposite the water spirit. She was an old spirit, one who showed no mercy in battle, even if it were only sparring. These battles were as harsh as the biting cold that surrounded him during them.

Afterwards he would travel to the base of the mountains to visit the earth spirit, a good friend of Baagh. Like the water spirit, he was wise, as well as philosophical, and somewhat obsessed with tea. He was also quite patient, his greatest virtue in battle.

Once he was finished there, and his body had adjusted back to normal warmth, he would travel to the volcanic western mountains to challenge the fire spirit. He wasn’t bitter like the ice spirit was, but he was still quite vicious, as he loved an intense battle, something that had rubbed off on Baagh.

Next came the light spirit, who resided at the summit of the easternmost mountain. She was a kind one, but she showed none of this in battle. Sure she wouldn’t strike to kill or attack Baagh while he was done, but she would hold nothing back when she attacked, putting all her might into everything.

Journeying to the cave at the heart of the same eastern mountains allowed Baagh to battle the shadow spirit. She had been quite hostile towards Baagh at first, as the majority of her encounters with others had involved them calling her evil. Once Baagh had shown her that he understood the difference between shadow magic and dark magic, the former being a natural element, the latter being the magic of evil, she started to warm up to him. Battles with her were less about who could do the most damage and more about who could outfox who the best.

After that he floated to the peak of the northern mountains, where he would fight the lightning spirit. He was an excitable spirit, just as powerful an addicted to intense battle as the fire spirit, but faster, and less concerned with technique and actual combat, their battles sometimes devolving into just flurries of chaotic movement and attacks that weren’t even aimed at each other.

Baagh needed only to travel to the peak of the next mountain over to battle the final of the elemental spirits, the wind spirit. She was the brother to the lightning spirit, and it showed in how much jest she seemed to take everything in. She was perhaps a bit more careful and forgiving than her brother, never blowing Baagh off the side of the mountain when she could, even though she knew he could stop the fall.

Baagh made a habit of always meditating in the different elemental areas after the battle before moving on, to recover some of his energy and further develop his magic, he also made a point of never using a spirit’s elemental weakness against them, using fire, ice, and light against the earth spirit, using shadow, earth, and lightning against the fire spirit, etc. exploiting such obvious weaknesses felt too cheap and easy for Baagh to act on. If he was going to win, it would be because he was more fully trained and prepared, not because his opponent had forgotten to tie their shoes before the battle had begun.

By the time he was done battle the elemental spirits, the sun was going down, and Baagh had just enough time left in the day to practice his special attack.

There were many different spells that could create duplicates of the user, and it was not uncommon for an elemental caster to add elemental magic to the spell to make a more powerful double. What was uncommon was one summoning eight different duplicates, wielding fire, ice, water, wind, earth, shadow, light, and lightning respectively. 

Elemental Roulette, as Baagh called it, took a lot of magic to cast. What’s more, Baagh could not battle alongside the doubles, as breaking his concentration would end the attack instantly.

Still, Baagh was certain that his magic was diverse and strong enough to win the World Combat Tournament, possibly without even needing to rely on his elemental clones at all.  
(

* * *

)   
Lucas Gueur’s mornings weren’t particularly interesting in terms of training. He woke, showered, ate breakfast, and left his house to get a cup of coffee.

The coffee was always free, as everyone in all of Paris recognized him by now. He was, after all, the only fighter in all of Paris that was going to be participating in the World Combat Tournament. 

After he finished his coffee, Lucas went for a quick sprint around the entire perimeter of Paris.

The run only lasted him around two hours these days because of how fast he had gotten. He always followed the same route, and because of this, he had become a local spectacle. Citizens of Paris would gather around the route to watch him go by, though usually he was only seen as a blur.

It also made him the target of several terrorist attacks, though none were successful. Those who arrived in person to try and assassinate Lucas directly learned first hand why one should not aggravate an ex-French boxer turned ex-French soldier, and those who left traps never seemed to leave strong enough traps. The most either ever managed to do was lengthen the time it took Lucas to finish his run.

After his run, Lucas stopped for a little water before heading off to his gym. Well, it wasn’t really his gym, but it quite certainly reported to be. He went there everyday, training his body through boxing against robotic training opponents, specialized combat droids usually used for training the military. He did a variety of other things, but people gathered in flocks to watch him tear apart robots in the ring.

On very rare occasions, a person would challenge Lucas to a match. Lucas didn’t seem to quite grasp the concept of keeping his talents concealed and eagerly knocked opponents out of the ring, quite literally.

He stopped for lunch after the gym, once again getting it for free. Afterwards, he went out to continue his training, and like usual, people crowded around to watch what Lucas did for his training, this being his last exercise of the day. For this one thought, they had to visit their local landmark.

Lucas hadn’t always been allowed to climb the outside the Eiffel Tower, as at first many people assumed he was carrying out some sort of attack. After a little negotiation, he was cleared for training.

He would start by running up and down the stairs on the inside, usually going about two dozen or so times, or however many more times he could within two hours. After that, he would stop for a little water, and then begin climbing up the outside of the tower towards the top.

It wasn’t that he climbed exactly. It was more that he punched and kicked the outside so hard that it dented the tower, caving it in just enough to act as a hand and foot hold in order to pull himself up. Each day, he would get a little higher up the tower, closer and closer to the top.

For the first few years, the point of the training was to simply climb as high as he could before running out of energy and falling off, and then his task was to land in such a way to not have his skull powderized by the impact. Then, at the end of his third year of training, he reached the top of the tower.

From that point on, Lucas would climb to the top, and then jump leap right off and drop back to the ground.

Many people asked him why he didn’t just climb down from the top, as it would have been less dangerous and would have provided him with more training as he did. Lucas never gave them straight answers, but insisted that his method was more beneficial to his training than climbing down would have been.

In truth, the fall served two purposes. The first was to build up his resilience. With each fall, he took a little less damage, his body hurt a little less. His bones, muscles, skin, everything grew stronger.

The second was to practice his special attack. He hadn’t had one for the first three years of his training, and was now seeking to fix that. Some caught on to this, but most never noticed it.

Most people simply assumed that he jumped from the top to save time. Most never noticed that his landing created a larger and larger crater each time. Those that did rarely noticed that he landed with one fist hitting the ground, and even those who noticed never thought much of it.

Personally, Lucas called the attack the Tower Drop, and while he wasn’t dumb enough to go around telling people about it, he had no problem practicing it not only there, but also against people and robots in the ring.  
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Michael Ghlea, more often than not, woke up inside of the tavern that he had black out in the night before. He had long ago built up a tolerance to hang-overs, and though his head would still hurt in the morning, it was more likely do to the brawl that had taken place in the tavern the night before than the drink.

Michael forced himself to his feet and staggered over to who he assumed to be the keeper of the tavern and handed him a few hundred dollars. That should be enough to pay for whatever damages had been done to the place the night before, either by him or as a result of something he had done to someone else.

After reimbursing the innkeeper, the hulking seven foot tall man left the place in search of food.

Michael had basically forgotten where exactly in Scotland he was in by this point, but he knew he had yet to find a town that wasn’t bordered by wilderness, with a tavern and a place to get breakfast in the morning.

After eating breakfast, Michael would leave for the next town, though he would first find a large boulder, fallen tree, or other equally heavy object for him to carry along the way.

It only took him about an hour or so to reach each new town, but he wouldn’t enter the town immediately upon arrival. His first order of business was to put down whatever heavy thing he had carried with him, then search the wooded area for something for him to fight.

The animal opponents he fought usually consisted of bucks, wild cats, badgers, or foxes. He of course left those of normal size alone, battling only the eight foot badgers or the twelve foot buck.

Sometimes he would find something really rare to fight, such as as an imported bear of some kind or, on one occasion, a five foot forest dragon. Michael had assumed that all the dragons in Scotland had been hunted to extinction, but evidently there were still a few of them slinking around.

For the dragon, he had broken is no weapons rule. If the winged lizard was going to spit poison at him, he saw it perfectly reasonable that he chuck a log at its head. For everything else though, he stuck to hand-to-hand, or more accurately, hand-to-hoof/horn/claw/fang.

Michael’s preferred method of combat was the traditional Scottish backhold wrestling, a martial art that involved bear hugging the enemy and trying to force them off of their balance. He had, however, learned a few tricks from a traveler when he had been young, and supplemented his combat with the basics of sumo wrestling.

Only the basics mind you, but when mixed with expert level backhold wrestling and Michael’s natural heavy build, it was more than enough to throw off most opponents.

After battling animals on the outskirts, Michael would enter the town for lunch, and to show off a trophy from a rare defeated foe, such as the aforementioned forest dragon. Afterwards, he would go to continue his training at the local combat arena.

Every town in all of Scotland these days had a combat hall for anyone to join in and battle, open mostly for the practice for the World Combat Tournament. Michael never battled for the prizes that were given out, though he would hardly turn them down if they were something particularly rare and valuable.

Michael was there, like most, for training. Losing was not an option, not with his aggressive nature. If ever he lost a battle, he would remain in town until he beat the person in a rematch. It was through this that he discovered his special attack, which he called the Scottish Handshake.

In truth, it was nothing but a rage state. His skin turned lightly red, his skin became denser, and he rushed the enemy, ignoring all pain and rampaging the enemy with the added strength he got from the state for the five minutes that it lasted. With training, he had learned to focus enough during the rage state to actually use his special attack, grabbing the enemy in a back hold, reeling back to supplex them, holding onto their hand, and pulling them back over his head to slam them down in front of him with all of his strength. That was about the extent of his focus in this state.

In any event, after training at the combat hall, he went to the local tavern for the rest of the night. He ate, drank, waited for a brawl, and joined in. he never had any money issues, as though he didn’t look it, he was quite wealthy, money from the war. Money that would run out now that the war had been over for so long. Money that Michael was determined to replace by winning the World Combat Tournament.


	4. Chapter 4

Anton Solled woke up at the foot of a tree. His body was scratched and bruised, but he couldn’t tell the old scars from the new ones anymore, no could he muster the effort to care. Thunder took his attention long before the faint pains would have.

Anton could have easily just plucked fruit from the trees or get fish from the nearby rivers, but he had little to no patients in the morning. As a result, he typically just went into whatever town he was closest to at the time.

There were a number of towns sprinkled along the Ussuri River, a result of the war. When many large cities had been destroyed by assaults, citizens fled to the several military bases that lined the river, which were re-purposed as towns after the war had ended.

These towns were Anton’s most immediate source of resources, as he could always sell bear belts and claws in exchange for food and drink. No one ever asked where he got them. A mixture of magic runoff and radiation from battles during the war had affected the Ussuri Brown bear population, resulting in a massive increase to the numbers and size. This had led to them becoming much more aggressive, and they began attacking the towns.

Because of this, hunting down the bears had become a local pass time, as any town along the Ussuri would offer a small reward for a confirmed kill of one of the local bears. Most citizens were able to take down one or two of them using greater numbers and either magic or guns, whichever was available.

But Anton, by his own understanding of the term, was a real man, and chose to battle the bears one on one with no weapons or any special skills aside from direct physical combat.

For as foolish as it seemed, Anton could take down two of the massive bears by himself where others needed to work in groups to slay just one of this. Because of this, and his known previous occupation as a wrestler, the title of Bear Wrestler seemed to follow Anton wherever he went.

Anton didn’t mind this, and even seemed to enjoy the praise he got for his feats. Wrestling the bears was excellent for his training, as his grapples had grown stronger and stronger until he had been strong enough to lift the bears and slam them back down on the ground, making him the first known human to do so.

Naturally, the bear wrestling was Anton’s usual and most prevalent form of training, but he would also accept battles from challengers and even enter small tournaments from time to time. He had only ever lost twice, both times against magic users.

After the second loss, Anton had asked for the mage’s assistance. He knew that he himself would never be able to use magic, he was much too unfocused and physically oriented for magic, but the mage had been able to teach him something. If he couldn’t use it, he would at least be able to defend against it. All Anton needed to do was land a single, open palm strike on the target, and the ability would dispel their ability to use magic for three full minutes. Not a terribly long time, but an eternity in a battle.

Aside from this, Anton still regularly practiced his wrestling, kept his strength up with weight lifting (his maximum possible bench press was one rep of two thousand pounds, fifteen hundred below the world record holder Kizume Katala), his speed up with jogging, though he knew he was not a very fast combatant, nor would he be at any point in the future, and kept his general fitness by swimming up the Ussuri River.

Anton had many times thought about what he would do with the prize money were he to win the World Combat Tournament, but in truth, he was fighting for honor first and money second.

He’d been accused of many things in his career as a wrestler. He’d been called a faker, told that his fights were scripted plays that were fixed from the start. He’d been called a cheater, accused of sneaking weapons, steroids, and many other illegal means of enhancement into the ring.

Anton was no fake, nor was he a cheat, and winning the World Combat Tournament would prove this to the world. This was what kept him fighting through the seasons, through wildlife, up and down the Ussuri River. In fact, it was one such moment of recalling this drive that led to the creation of his special attack.

It had been nightfall, the winds howling and the river’s water thrashing. It was Anton’s second year of training, and two Ussuri’s were standing between Anton and the river.

He was beaten and sore, not to mention fearful of death. He was tempted for a moment to turn tail and run away from the giant, monstrous bears before him. But that thought of forever being mocked, forever being a joke in the world of fighting, led him to stand his ground against them.

He grabbed the first, letting out a determined war cry as he lifted it up and threw it into the air. The bear soared thirty feet into the air before falling back down, Anton’s fist connecting with it before it hit the ground. The bear was sent spiralling into the second, both were thrown into the river and swept away by the current. Anton had survived, and the Ussuri Strike was born.

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Gregory Bilanail woke up on the same hard metal bed he always woke up on. Oh sure it was a different prison every month, but it was always the same damned bed.

Gregory had been in and out of many different prisons ever since he was nineteen, likely a mix of his being so poor that theft was his only means of survival, and his inability to keep his mouth shut in front of authority figures. There was something about being talked down to by someone he knew he could beat down in less than a minute that made him want to remind them of their place in the grand scheme of things.

He’d always been good at surviving within prisons. He constantly trained his own strength and endurance while imprisoned. Escaping the place was almost as easy for him as getting into them in the first place, as he trained his stealth and tactical skills whenever he was outside of them, and in truth it was only a little while ago he had actually decided to compete in the World Combat Tournament.

His training routine was relatively simple. He would spent one month inside prison, training and fighting the other inmates until he was running the place. Then he would escape at the end of the month and flee to the next town over, where he would spend a month training his stealth and strategy, and robbing every business in town in the process. He would then let himself get caught at the end of the month to restart the cycle.

So long as Gregory was able to make it to the island where it was held, he was legally able to participate in the tournament. More importantly, winning would give him enough money to pay off all his bail, all his debts, and leave him with enough left over for good living; both for him and his family.

He had even developed a special attack along the way, one that came in handy when it came time to leave a prison and he wasn’t in the mood to be subtle.

He called it the Prison Point Punch, a single strike that was strong enough to obliterate any prison wall that he had come across thus far, even those enhanced with magic. It came at the expense of nearly all the energy in his body and a broken hand, but even still, Gregory pitied anyone who ended up on the wrong end of his signature punch.  
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Kaiser Militad woke up in his bed, still hearing the gunfire. The war was over, Germany was safe, and had been for years, but he could still hear the fighting. And whenever he woke up from nightmares that pulled him back to the days of the war, he trained.

Because of Kaiser’s habit of training whenever he woke up early, which happened so frequently that Kaiser was shocked whenever he got a peaceful night’s sleep, the retired soldier had technically been training for the World Combat Tournament for over a decade. Even longer than that if his combat during the war could be considered training as well.

Kaiser’s training now was an imitation of his bootcamp training. Wake up, five hundred push-ups, five hundred sit-ups, and a ten mile run before he was allowed breakfast. He even wore his old combat gear during his training, both out of a desire to increase his total amount of training, and out of a gut fear that one day he would hear those sirens again, see those signal flares again, and know that he would have to return to war.

Kaiser hadn’t actually decided to participate in the World Combat Tournament until a year before it. He figured it was a goal to strive for, something to focus on, and something that justified his excessive training no less. He was always looking for something to focus on, fearing what would happen if he allowed himself to lose focus on be alone with his own thoughts and memories.

After breakfast was combat training. During his military days, this meant practice with the military equipment and weapons, but now it meant only practicing various hand to hand techniques. Despite never having joined a dojo or other group, Kaiser had become a master of boxing, karate, taekwondo, and judo. Whenever he had mastered a skill, he just moved on to the next.

After practicing these martial arts skills, Kaiser practiced his actual attacks. During the war, Kaiser had learned many different attacks to combat the invading armies. These attacks were all possible do to his aura training not in an element, but in warfare itself.

Such an aura type was a dangerous one, and Kaiser knew it, even when he had first begun forcing his aura to lock onto the battle. He had been a young, frightened soldier in the midst of a war he had thought certainly would outlive him. His warfare aura was one of the reasons his dreams of the war were so detailed.

The first attack was a sort of zen state. Entering it allowed him to forget the battle and focus on the fight, or at least that’s how he always described it. His mind blocked out all distraction, emotion, and instinct, allowing him to soldier on against a target regardless of circumstance.

He had also learned out to send out a small burst of aura energy from his hands. Originally it had been used to block out storms of bullets being fired at him, but in hand to hand, it could knock an enemy back several feet.

He had learned to lace this aura energy around bullets and blades during the war, and could now to the same to his hands and feet, making them armor tough.

None of his aura attacks were as powerful as they could be. For obvious reason, he hadn’t had much time to meditate during the war, and now that it was over, meditating wouldn’t train his aura. Even still, this hadn’t stopped him from developing a special attack.

He had named the attack the Tank Buster, as its intended purpose had been to actually disable enemy tanks and other such war machines. During the war, he would enter his zen state, wrap his entire body in aura energy, and leap at the tank, forcing all of his physical power into a single spinning punch, letting out a powerful aura pulse as his fist made contact.

This mix of all of Kaiser’s aura abilities had ripped through three dozen enemy tanks, and been equally effective regardless of the metal, model, or magical enhancements to the machine. He had also used it to take down armored vehicles, fortified strongholds, and even a few armored soldiers.

Needless to say, Kaiser had modified the attack, as using it in it’s normal state would be, without question, lethal. Even in its restrained form, the Tank Buster was a devastating blow that could, would, and had shattered bones and knocked opponents across entire fields on contact. It was almost a guaranteed knockout if it hit, and it left his arm burning and sore. Which, considering the original form had more or less shattered his arm with every use, he figured was a fair trade off.

Kaiser was still constantly restless and nervous, and training for the World Combat Tournament just so happened to line up with the things that kept him calm. He wasn’t planning on winning, and had no idea what to do with the money if he did.

Not that he planned on holding back.  
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Tem Rusrur owned no alarm clock, and yet her eyes opened at six o'clock AM, precisely six o'clock AM down to the second, every single morning without fail.

Tem was a very meticulous woman, always counting the seconds. Literally. It took her exactly a half hour to cook and eat her breakfast, whereafter she waited exactly fifteen minutes for her stomach to settle, stretched her body for exactly ten minutes, and then began her training.

The first half of Tem’s training was quite simple, just simple exercises that anyone could do so she could keep her body in shape. It was a bit more rigorous than the general public, but nothing extravagant. Her exercise lasted precisely five hours before she stopped to prepare and eat lunch.

By this point it would be exactly 21:40 PM, and Tem would begin to meditate. She sat down on her living room floor, closed her eyes, and let her mind drift off, bathing in the numbers that flowed through her thoughts.

Tem, you see, was a psychic. Well, psychic in the sense that her brain was evolved beyond that of a normal human. A simple mutation that made her one of the most intelligent creatures on the planet Earth.

Technically speaking, Tem wasn’t human, as she was further along the evolutionary line. But wars over that had come and gone, and Tem saw no reason to use her mind to harm people; though she could if she wanted, with her mind being more accurate than the world’s atomic clock with a processing speed that surpassed the most advanced known microchips ever invented.

No, she wanted to teach.

And what better way to show people the value of the mind than by showing them that, yes, you could use it to win a fight. Tem’s mind made combat a relatively simple matter. Watch the enemy’s movement, learn the patterns to how they fight, and after that, it was all a matter of proper timing.


	5. Chapter 5

Carlotta Disora woke with a yawn, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes before reaching over for her breakfast. Her food was on a platter by her bed, like usual. She wished her father would stop babying her and let her at least prepare her own meals.

Still, they were well made meals and afterwards she was always ready to begin the day’s training. Granted, most who observed her in action wouldn’t recognize it as training. Most would assume she was just practicing her dancing. Excessively sure, but it was still just hours of dancing.

She practiced in multiple different styles, but her main style was ballet. And from her dancing, she had learned combat.

It had taken Carlotta a long time to do it, but after many years of practicing at it, she had managed to create her own fighting style based entirely around different dance styles. It was hard to predict her next move, as she could switch her style at a moment’s notice.

She could be offensive, defensive, evasive, or sporadic based on the kind of dancing she was using, the fighting was helped along by her own natural agility and hard trained strength. She might not have looked tough, but Carlotta could, and frequently did, kick a cinderblock to bits with one strike, and could get enough momentum behind her to shatter several bones with a well placed hit.

In her time training, she had developed her own special ability for her own martial art. It was a strange mix of ballet movements and belly dancing that caused the opponent who saw it to enter a trance. They would stand stock still, unaware of how much damage they were taking until Carlotta stopped moving and they collapsed in pain.

Carlotta called it Dancer’s Haze, and was certain that it could take her to victory in the World Combat Tournament.  
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Morise Secabo woke to the sound of birds chirping in the trees. It was a common occurance these days. He remembered how calm and peaceful he had found it at first. Now it was just as irritating as any other alarm clock.

He got up and ate before anything else. He then stretched out his limbs, got properly dressed, picked up the axe he’d be using for the day, and exited his tent to start his day.

Morise was a lumberjack, one for a specific forest. During the war, a mixture of nano-technology and nature magic had resulted in a forest near Ontario that was ever growing. A tree, once cut down to the stump, would be fully grown the next morning, and a full grown tree in this forest was forty feet tall and five feet thick.

At the time, it had seemed brilliant, and the trees were routinely cut down as resources for the war. Now, with no war, very few wanted to continue cutting down the endless forest. Save for Morise, who used the endless work as his training.

On his first day on the job, Morise had managed to make a small clearing in the forest, as the massive trees took forever to cut down and even longer to transport to the city by hand.

Now a days, Morise could cut down a whole tree in a single, well placed chop. His muscles had grown accustom to the constant effort required for cutting down these trees, and he’d grown strong enough to lift three of them at once to carry them back to town easily.

Granted, his actual axe would only last until about midday before shattering into pieces from all the force going through it. At that point, Morise would stop for lunch, then continue cutting down trees with his arms.

He called it the Axe Punch, though it wasn’t exactly a punch so much as it was a hard strike with his forearm that was strong enough to let him cut through the trees with a single strike. It left his arms bruised and sore, but it was still faster than using the axe and worked well.

Not as well as his special attack though. It was thanks to this special attack that he was able to cut down the rest of the trees in his entire section of forest before the end of the day.

He called it the axe spin. He put as much force as possible into a two handed Axe Punch, and spun fast to send that force outward. The force cut through the air in a wide radius around him hard enough to slice down several dozen trees in every direction. The only drawback was how tired it left him, and with how many trees he would still need to haul off.  
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Becka Aespir was starting to forget exactly how deep beneath the earth’s surface she actually was. It was hard to keep track when you moved several miles deeper each day.

Becka came from a long line of miners, and had inherited the family skills. No one was sure if it was magic, a mutation, or some manner of metaphysical energy, but for whatever reason, the members of Becka’s family could move through the rock and dirt as easily as most did through air.

Becka was quite certain that, if left to her own devices, she would have made it down to the Earth’s core by now. But no, she needed to clear the trails she made for the other miners each day, which she supposed made for good training.

Using her pickaxe, digging hammer, and shovel helped her build up muscles in her arms and legs, and using the jackhammer and drill allowed her to build up resistance to pressure on her body, as if being deeper underground than any other human in history wasn’t already doing so.

And though she wasn’t fully aware of it, just breathing down in the caves was training her heart and lungs.

She was, however, aware of the kind of training the mining explosives gave her. At first, she considered them nothing more than a nuisance that left her with bruises and burns, but soon she learned that whatever force gave her family the power to essentially swim through the ground, was also quite adaptable to other things.

It had done so in two ways. The first was a barrier around her that would guard against anything up to and including minor explosives. It wasn’t a passive guard, needing her focus and energy to hold.

And the second was the ability to project a small explosion away from her body. Becka used this to perform her special attack. She triggered the explosion while underground, the launched herself up from underground to attack. She called it Fire in the Hole.

She wasn’t sure if she would actually win the World Combat Tournament, but she knew that if she made it far enough, she’d be able to afford to research where her family’s powers came from.

And perhaps she would even have enough money left over to dig to the center of the Earth.  
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Daniel Combatore woke to his alarm at just before sunrise. Today was his last day in town; he couldn’t very well be late to his own match on his last day now could he?

Daniel was a bullfighter, and a rather famous one at that. His training for the World Combat Tournament had him traveling all of Spain, staying one week in each town he reached to perform at the local bullfighting arena.

His constant traveling was the first cause for his slowly growing fame, the knowledge that he would be in the World Combat Tournament being the second. The third was the way Daniel fought against the bulls.

Daniel didn’t bring a whip into battle, nor did he bring a sword or dagger. He didn’t even bring a red cape with him for distraction. He fought the bulls barehanded, which was made even more spectacular by the kinds of bulls he fought.

He had stopping fighting the normal run of the mill bulls after he had killed his one hundredth of them. After that, he took to battling what was known to the locals as the torus diablo, the demon bulls.

Many animals had been mutated from the after effects of the war, but the demon bulls were one of the few animals intentionally created for battle. They were twice, sometimes three times, the size of normal bulls, with spiked horns, hooves, and backs. They had fangs, ate meat, and were known to enter powerful berserker states when they became enraged.

Daniel had been battling the demon bulls for over a year. He’d almost died more times than he could count, but he’d managed to kill every demon bull he was sent against, even developing a special attack for them.

He would grab them, throwing them into the air and jumping after them. He grabbed them by the horns in mid-air and flung them back to the ground, where they would, if not die, at least be too damaged to fight back anymore.

He called it the Bull Toss. using it, and hard trained skills and strength, he planned to win the World Combat Tournament and increase his fame to newer heights.


	6. Chapter 6

Skesir woke with her stomach growling. She always did. Her body was created without the energy intake in mind, and so she needed to eat quite a lot just to function properly.

She often wished that the beings who had created her had done a better job of it. Then again, if she had been made the way she were supposed to, she wouldn’t have had the mind to escape from the lab like she had. In any event, she lived in a forest now, and an overpopulated on at that.

She hunted for hours. Birds, fish, dogs, humans, her body could break down every part of the animal and let her digest all of it. When she had enough energy to sustain herself, she started training.

First was speed and strength, dashing through the forest at top speed, not slowing, dodging and weaving through obstructions and lifting, pushing, and breaking rocks and tree stumps.

When that was done, or more accurately, when Skesir was hungry again, she’d go hunting again, then practice her battling.

There were many caves beneath the forest. Humans would have recognized them as dungeons, but to Skesir, they were just large, beast filled caves. 

She could usually kill everything within the dungeons in just one day, including the giant monster that would await her at the very bottom. She fed on everything within the dungeon that she physically could, then rose up back to ground level and continued training her strength and speed training.

Skesir knew how humans used money, and knew that if she became strong and won the World Combat Tournament, she’d have so much of it, she’d never wake up hungry again.  
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Chieko Hibusen was woken early by her mentor. She got up, stretched her arms and legs, then went down to begin the day. She and her mentor had a deal, he would prepare the food, but she needed to make it through the obstacle course twice before she could eat it.

It was heavily centered around climbing and balancing in the many trees around their camp. It wasn’t exactly a traditional samurai training method, but it was necessary.

Chieko ate after completing the obstacle course twice, then she was sent to read and meditate for three hours. It was up to her which she did for how long, so long as she did both within the three hour time span.

Chieko had once complained about that part of the training. At the time, she had thought that it was a waste of time. Her temper had long since been reigned in, and she had learned the importance of a sound mind to match a sound body.

The rest of the day was physical. Running, sparring, climbing, swimming, and chi practice. Chieko was the most focused on her chi energy, as it would help her perform very specific tasks in battle.

In addition to increasing her strength, speed, and durability in battle, the chi would wrap around her body to form a seemingly solid armor of chi energy resembling samurai armor. With more training, she learned to use the chi to form a yumi bow, kanabo, naginata, and a katana.

Chieko’s mentor had refused to let her actually use the weapons on anything but wooden blocks until she had learned discipline, and even then he only rarely let her actually spar with them.

He explained to her that forming weapons from chi was a dangerous and difficult art to master. He explained to Chieko how losing focus might result in the weapons vanishing or even just exploding in her hands.

After the sun set, Chieko would meditate again for another hour, resting and building her chi energy back up before practicing her special attack: The Chi-Wave.

The attack let out a massive burst of all the remaining chi-energy in her body like an energy grenade. It didn’t hurt, but it exhausted her to the point she could barely stand, making it strictly for last resorts only.  
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Anna Vinacida woke up when she was hungry. Hunger seemed to be the only the only thing that could reliably wake her up. Then again, she was a hunter. Hunger was even more of an alarm bell for her than it was to others.

She had been trained in hunting all her life, a perk of having paranoid gun toting parents. She’d been taught how to use multiple different firearms, bow and arrows, crossbows, hunting swords, fishing rod, sling, hunting spear and many different pit, net, and spike traps.

But, more recently, she had started training herself to hunt with nothing but her bare hands.

It helped that her aura was attuned to the forest, and would let her vanish seemingly into thin air with her aura camouflage ability. She could become almost entirely invisible in a completely open clearing in seconds. Her speed, agility, and strength were also boosted by her aura, but her defensive skills and durability were nothing special. She wasn’t great at taking hits, as she had never needed to be.

She spent her entire day, however long she was awake for it, hunting. She ate what she needed to and sold the rest to the nearby town. Anna didn’t know it, but her regular supplying of food was basically feeding the entire village.

Aside from her hard trained skill to take down almost any animal with only a few strikes and her extensive knowledge of pressure points, Anna had managed to make a special ability for herself in her days of training and hunting.

She called it the Zero Point Strike, and it required perfect accuracy. Once she was locked onto a target, her body would fire at them faster than a bullet from a gun and with far more force.

Using the Zero Point Strike, Anna could punch a hole through an elephant without getting any blood on herself. Anna knew that, with these skills, she could win the World Combat Tournament, and use the money to build a shelter for her family; one that would be strong enough to protect them from any apocalypse.  
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Ingulanos woke up with a thundering yawn that signaled the servants to bring in the food. He woke around the same time every day, and the chefs began cooking an hour beforehand to get enough ready.

Whether or not Ingulanos was human or not was largely up to debate. His unnatural size, eight feet tall and built like a brick wall, seemed to suggest not. His size and strength came from a mutation; a single misplacement in the alignment of his DNA, so technically he was a new race of human.

Of course, that wasn’t the argument had by the people of the island where he lived. No, they debated over whether he was a god or a demi-god.

At fourteen years old, Ingulanos stumbled into the island’s village. Naturally, his size and odd, broken speech led him to be attacked by the locals, which led to him ripping a well out of the ground and smashing his attackers with it.

Between this and the odd weather patterns at the time, such as the volcanic activity, large waves, and black clouds, people of the island had begun to think he was either the child of the island’s patron god, or the island’s patron god in physical form. They built him shrines, and a temple where he trained all day long, never worrying about food or drink, as it was provided for him to prevent his supposedly divine wrath.

Ingulanos’ training was composed mainly of finding bigger, heavier, and tougher materials to lift, throw, run with, and break; either by stomping, punching, or crushing them between his arms in a powerful bear hug.

The closest thing he had to a special attack was a powerful body slam, combining gravity and his own massive size and weight.

In truth, Ingulanos wasn’t even certain of what the World Combat Tournament was, just that there would be many people there for him to fight, and that was good enough for him.


	7. Chapter 7

Zha-Yong woke to the sound of the temple’s chimes. Well, technically he woke, but he was never actually asleep. He, like most all the other monks in the temple, meditated rather than actually slept.

Zha-Yong was the focus of all the temple’s training. All the monks trained of course, but Zha-Yong was the only one who was going to be competing in the World Combat Tournament, so his training was considered much more important than the others, at least for the time being.

He had been trained to use ki, chi, and chakra. He could switch between the different energies in an instant, and fire burst of them from his hands and feet. He was also able to channel the energy into his muscles to increase his durability and strength in a battle.

He had mastered all thirty of the possible martial arts he could learn at the temple, and of those he had completely mastered ten of them. Like with his metaphysical energies, he could switch between the different styles in a moment’s notice to keep his enemy guessing.

His evasion was trained using an obstacle course built near the temple specifically for his training. A single misstep would leave Zha-Yong as a minced pile of bloodied and beaten down meat.

Zha-Yong trained all day, every day, and had done so for more than five years straight now. The fate of his temple was relying on his winning the World Combat Tournament. The money would rescue the temple from going to ruin, so he couldn’t afford to risk a single day of not training.

And through his hard training, he had become physically superhuman. His special attack was a burst of energy that combined all three forms of metaphysical energy his body could form, a blast of energy referred to as the Inner Power.

The tournament was drawing closer, and Zha-Yong was confident he could win it.  
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Taza Loshay always slept with one eye open, and woke up early in the morning; before the sun was even up. If he allowed himself to sleep normally, he might wake up tied to a tree or the side of a cliff or going over a waterfall. His clan may have kept the Apache name, but they had not kept their culture.

They’d taken their fighting style though, swift and powerful, winning before the opponent even knew that the battle had started. Taza had been trained in this for his entire life.

He’d also been trained to trust nothing, but he went against that training. The ancient Apache readings that his tribe had collected may have been a front to make others believe that they were real Apache warriors, but Taza, if no one else, actually took the time to read them.

When he had been young, Taza had trained himself to do battle with all of the original Apache weapons, especially their famous bow and arrows, which he used to train his accuracy.

He read up on how the Apaches had trained, and used this to supplement his own modern training. He knew that fighting in the World Combat Tournament, so he would need to learn a new way to fight.

His original intent was to master chi and use it to summon chi-weapons he could fight with. But, as he diligently trained himself, he discovered something else that he could use to fight.

Using chakra might not have let Taza summon ethereal weapons, but with constant training, his strikes could be made even faster and stronger than any of his Apache weapons.

He was something of a glass cannon, but to make up for it, he had his special ability: chakra healing. It took a lot of chakra to use, but it could heal anything from a scrape to a shattered bone in moments. He doubted anyone else would be thinking about healing, so he knew he would have a massive advantage in the tournament.  
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Caelin Sernator woke to the sound of a striking gong. He grumbled, not wanting to wake up yet, but he supposed that he didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter. He got up and headed off, needing to get food before the fighting started.

‘The King,’ as he called himself, was an exceedingly eccentric and rich man seeking to make himself even richer. There were many ways he could have done this, but to him, training a bunch fighters to battle in the World Combat Tournament made the most logical sense.

He offered all of his fighters, the gladiators as he called them, a cut of the wealth and all of the fame for victory in the tournament. Considering all of them were as poor as he was rich, he figured that it was a fair trade, especially with him providing food, water, and shelter during their training.

The only training regiment he knew to give them was to have them all battle each other and whatever powerful beasts he could find and bring in. Of the gladiators, Caelin was the strongest. More importantly, he was the smartest. He had no magic or metaphysical power, no mutations or special techniques, but he did have an uncanny ability to see the flaws in others’.

When he had first arrived for training, this skill was all he had, and back then it hadn’t been enough. But now, combined with his hard trained strength, speed, and durability, it made him a powerful fighter.

It was to the point that no one else was willing to directly challenge him, and all of his battles needed to be arranged.

Caelin had no doubt that he could win at the World Combat Tournament, and he planned on keeping all of the prize money for himself.  
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Meghan Umbrose woke up as the sun was going down. She had always been something of a night owl, never quite feeling comfortable being awake during the day; even before she had become a vigilante.

Meghan’s town of residence had been a crime filled hotbed since long before she had been born, but it had only taken her three years to rid it of all major criminals and supervillains. With the crime in her town reduced to nothing but the occasional petty theft, the vigilante known only as Umbra moved on to the next.

Meghan had trained her body as far as she could naturally, and even unlocked her aura. Her aura had bound to the shadows and moonlight, making her that much stronger and faster at night. On a full moon night, she could catch a bullet out of the air and throw it back at the same speed.

But her aura came with other abilities as well. She wasn’t just called Umbra because she operated at night. Her aura could reach out and connect to the shadows, allowing her to control and manipulate them as though they were physical objects. She could form hands, claws, tendrils, blades, walls, chains, and cages out of the shadows, using all of them against criminals.

She could also form an armor of shadow around her body that would work as a bullet proof vest over her whole body. She needed a shadow at least the size and shape of her own body to form it, otherwise the armor would be weaker.

But the power that struck fear into the hearts of Umbra’s enemies was her special ability: The Nightmare Shadow.

When she used it, Meghan’s shadow would wrap around her body, merging with it and making her intangible, boosting her strength and speed by a factor of three, and giving her the power to melt away into darkness. Most frighteningly, she could possess and enemy’s shadow and control their body like a puppet.

The shadow was connected to the soul, and while possessing it, Umbra could make them see, hear, and feel whatever she wanted them to in order to make them do what she wanted them to, allowing her to form their own personal nightmare.

The main reason Meghan was entering in the World Combat Tournament was to show off her power to the villains of the world, a warning to them. That said, the cash prize didn’t hurt.


	8. Chapter 8

Leo Calleitu woke in an alley behind a dumpster. He got up, popped his neck, and headed out. If he was gonna eat, he needed to make his rounds.

There were rules that needed to be followed if one was to survive on these streets. There were a few different routes one could take, and Leo had opted to be a lone thug, as he didn’t play well with others.

Leo would needed to at least fight off three different groups of gang members before he ate breakfast; both because they would be taking over his territory if he didn’t, and because the money he could shake them down for would pay for his meal.

What set Leo apart from the other groupless hoodlums was how strong he was, even without any weapons. Sure, when he had them, he would use a knife, chain, pipe, or firearm, but he could also take a direct hit from each of them without even flinching.

Leo’s strength and durability were legendary on the streets. He was the guy who’d lift a police car, throw it over a building, then take three headshots before it even broke the skin on his face.

Not even Leo was certain where his power came from, he assumed it was some kind of magic though, as he always felt a tingling sensation wherever he was around someone or something magical in nature. Even if his bodily powers had nothing to do with magic, his special attack certainly did.

Leo had discovered the attack by accident during a territorial brawl. Someone had gotten it into their head that they could beat him down and take some of his territory using an amulet, probably stolen. Said amulet stopped glowing almost instantly upon getting within Leo’s line of sight.

With practice, Leo learned that he could actually draw all the magic out of an area, pulling it into his body to make him even stronger and more durable. He also learned that using it more than twice in one day would cause his body to overheat and break down.

He called it the Mana Surge, and was hoping, borderline praying, that it would let him win the World Combat Tournament so he could finally get off of the streets and sleep in a bed.  
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Mandal Enobula was always the first of the group to wake up. He would pick up his short stabbing spear and go out hunting as the others continued to sleep. The sun would just be rising when he returned with meat for the rest of the group.

Mandal wasn’t allowed to eat anything until everyone else did, hence his bringing it in before the others were even up so he wouldn’t have to wait for them to get it themselves. It was a part of his training he didn’t very much care for, but he supposed that some deal of suffering was inherent to the Zulu lifestyle.

Unlike everyone else, who’s clothing and shield were made of leather, Mandal’s were heavily waited, along with his spear, club, bow; basically everything he had to interact with on a daily basis. They had been unusable for him at first, but now they felt as natural to him as normal tools.

Everyone in the group trained, always had, but Mandal’s had spiked in difficulty some time ago. He was given break only when absolutely necessary for food, sleep, and other possible emergencies. Other than that, he trained twice as hard as the others, all day, every day, without anything resembling a break until he was done.

Despite this, Mandal’s spirit had not been broken, and he knew it was all worth it. He had nearly lost hope from all the sparring, as he wasn’t allowed to use weapons while his opponents were, but as he got stronger, he saw he didn’t need them. He hadn’t lost a fight in two years.

He had no metaphysical powers of any kind. He had, instead, been taught a sort of tribal magic, created specifically by the Zulu, for the Zulu. It was entirely spell based, meaning Mandal couldn’t channel raw magic, nor could he control any magic that was formed outside of his own spells.

He could use this magic to summon a magical version of the Zulu poison spit, and could turn it highly acidic by forcing more and more magic to it. He could also summon a Zulu spear and shield, which he had trained with and could sustain for several hours at a time even while heavily damaged.

He had not been able to summon any distance attacks. It had taken a lot of training to learn to, but he was now able to fire arrows directly from his hands. It took up a lot of magic though, and he couldn’t get very much accuracy with them unless the target was holding still, so he rarely used it.

Mandal had learned one last spell in his training. Channeling all of his magic, he could use his special attack: The Bull Horns Formation, as he had taken to calling it, named for the traditional Zulu combat formation.

And aptly named, as the attack basically just fired highly concentrated magic in three bursts, firing two that curved out from either direction to collide on either side and one that fired directly forward from Mandal’s body. In the event that the target was still standing, Mandal could still charge himself, as he wouldn’t be tired from the attack, just unable to use any magic.

These were the skills that Mandal would be taking him to the World Combat Tournament, and he knew that victory would take him to the head of the Zulu tribe. Failure was not an option as far as he was concerned.  
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Egil Jagnin woke to the sound of a war cry, and grumbled in irritation at being left out of a brawl. He got up quickly, already wearing his weighted armor and ready to go. He reached to the table in the center of the tent, taking a large chunk of meat and a mug and heading out to the others to join the fray.

Egil and the others in his group spent the majority of their time fighting. Sometimes it was a brawl, sometimes it was something more strategic. As the children of the Norse gods, fighting was in their blood, etched into their very souls.

Egil and the others in the group were demi-gods, or at the very least they assumed they were. All of them had special powers, and they did in fact seem to line up with the Norse gods of old. Granted, they also lined up remarkably well with the chemical and magical weapons that had been used in the battle over this territory years before during the war, and some of that may have been left floating around in the air for these vikings to have acquired through a sort of magical osmosis.

But the warriors of the group refused to believe anything else than that they were of a godly heritage. Egil himself was under the belief that his powers came from that of Sōl, the goddess of the sun. 

He could let out bright waves of light to blind enemies. He could form balls of light that could be used to distract or even attack if he concentrated it enough to make them burst, as well as summon screens of light for defense that could be sent flying towards an enemy like a weapon.

He could summon weapons and armor made of light, though everyone in the group seemed to be able to summon weapons and armor made of some elemental matter. He could summon a long spear, great sword, or shield, as well as full viking armor. Neither could be maintained for more than a few minutes at a time, so he needed to work fast.

He could also summon two of the weapons of Sōl, a whip made of light and horse for cavalry charging the enemy. The fact that the vikings were specifically able to summon weapons from their patron deity was proof to the vikings of their descending from the Norse gods, but then again, so much of magic was dependent on the human’s individual expectations for it anyway.

Egil had been trained hard physically as well. Just in case his divine powers in some way left him and he was left by himself with nothing but his own power. They had decided that he was physically strong enough when he had gotten strong enough to bear-hug a five foot thick tree into two pieces after uprooting it by himself. He wasn’t exactly very fast on foot, but he rarely needed to be.

Most spectacular, and the reason it had been Egil elected to go to the World Combat Tournament instead of the leader of the warrior group, was his special attack. As the warriors understood it, the attack called down a direct attack from Sol herself, and was appropriately named Sōl’s Wrath.

The non-vikings who had seen the attack described it as a solar flare being formed and directed down to hit a specific target on the earth. It could focus down to radius of five feet, and anything within that five feet was not likely to still be there when the attack finally ended. This was the attack that had earned Egil the respect of the entire group, and won him the right to fight in the tournament.  
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Hazel Pouigōs woke on her perch in the mountains, yawning and stretching out her limbs. Contrary to popular belief, harpies did not sleep in massive nests. Instead, Hazel had her perch furnished with animal skins.

Harpies were one of the more curious parts of the world these days. Everyone understood that strange, mysterious creatures existed now, but harpies were a difficult case. Harpies had full sentience, their minds as fully developed as that of a human being’s. They weren’t often very intelligent, but then again, a normal human wouldn’t be either if they were denied schooling.

But it was difficult to make humans understand and accept that they were as intelligent and deserving of rights as a creatures with feathers and talons.

It had been especially hard for Hazel, who had been born to human parents. They had been able to give her a semi-normal life for quite a few years of her early life by plucking feathers and filing down her beak and talons, but it soon became far too much for them to hide.

So Hazel had decided that she would not hide. No, Hazel thought, she would do what sentient beings did best: fight.

Her strength wasn’t much, but she was more agile than most humans could ever dream of being. Her claws and beak could peal through steel like hot butter, and a flick of her wings could send her feathers flying at an enemy; sharp as throwing daggers and as fast as bullets.

Hazel could fly at just below the speed of a stealth bomber, breaking the sound barrier with barely any effort. She used this, and her above average resistance to g-forces, to her advantage in combat.

Hazel’s special attack, Harpy’s Fury, involved grabbing a target with her talons and taking off directly upwards. She would break the sound barrier on her way up and let go of the target to let them continue flying upwards from the momentum. Hazel would fly in a circle as she flew closer to the target, flinging razor feathers at them from all sides before colliding with them and using her beak, the talons on her feet, and the claws on her hands, to rip and tear as they fell.

Finally, Hazel would grip the enemy with her talons again and fly directly down with them, breaking the sound barrier on the way back down before releasing them to let them slam into the ground as she flew herself back up.

Hazel had needed to practice quite a lot to make this move non-lethal, but she knew it would be worth it when she won the World Combat Tournament. With all that money and fame, she could make sure no one ever treated her or any other harpy wrong just because she had wings.


	9. Chapter 9

Cindy Potement didn’t sleep. She, like many others whose powers circulated through their minds, simply meditated, letting her mind go into a sort of hibernation mode that she could snap out of at a moment’s notice.

Cindy was a psychic; all of her power generated within and used by her mind. Her powers had started off fairly basic, just simple levitation of other objects. But as she had trained and grown, her powers had gotten stronger and more complex.

Now she could even levitate herself to simulate flight, bringing any object within her sight with her as she did. And if she focused all the energy on a single object, she could lift anything up to three thousand pounds.

She had learned to fire of waves of psychic energy in short bursts after she had mastered her telekinesis. It was a fairly weak attack, but it was fast, easy, and most opponents weren’t expecting it.

Cindy had also learned three slightly more arcane powers. She had learned them specifically to counter the powers of magic users, which she had grown oddly fearful of.

The first of these powers were mind reading. It took her some time and focus, but once she was in, she could learn a year’s worth of information about her opponent in a matter of seconds. The second was teleportation, which had taken the longest to learn. It allowed her to appear anywhere from her start point within a fifty foot radius.

The third of these powers, and hardest to use properly, was seeing into the future. It was more a matter of sending her mind into overdrive, analyzing all possible factors in the situation and seeing multiple possible futures based on that data. From there it was up to her to determine which of the possible futures was the most probable and react accordingly. She hadn’t mastered it yet though, and she had been fooled by it almost as many times as she’d fooled others with it.

Her only defensive technique was a sort of psychic barrier that she formed around her body. Really it was just a form of telekinesis that was focused on forcing anything in proximity to Cindy’s body away. It could be broken if she took enough damage, but it could take a whole clip from a sub-machine gun without it breaking down, so she figured she would be fine against unarmed humans.

Cindy, after training her other abilities to the farthest extent she could, developed a special attack. She called it the Mind Break, and it was a combination of her psychic wave attack and her mind reading. 

Using the two abilities sent and attack directly into the target’s mind, causing a horrible splitting pain that couldn’t be healed by magic or metaphysical healing, as it wasn’t actual bodily damage. It could knock out a full grown military soldier, and even those who weren’t entirely knocked out were stricken with terrible migraines that made focus impossible for them.

Cindy was certain that her powers could fix the problems being faced by the world. She was also certain that any human could be trained to have powers exactly like hers if only they could be trained. And with the money she got from winning the World Combat Tournament, she would have all the funding she would need.  
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Aster Minorem woke with the weight of his plated armor making his muscles terribly sore. ‘No reward with suffering,’ he reminded himself. He pushed himself up from his bed, and walked outside for his morning prayer before he ate.  
  
Aster had been a knight by philosophy for most of his life, but he had only learned all the physical skills associated with the trade over the past five years. He knew he would not be able to bring any knight weapons with him into combat at the tournament, and so he had trained his body far beyond the norm, and learned a variety of attacks to compensate for being unarmed.  
  
His Broadsword Strike could cleave through stone with all the force of an actual broadsword behind it. His Halberd Bash was an overhead attack that traded the accuracy of the Broadsword Strike for having almost twice the power behind it. His Morning Star Punch could knock out a fully armored man in just one direct punch to the face.  
  
He had feared, for awhile, that he would never find any way to implement his knowledge of the crossbow into his combat. 

Then, he had learned how to use the metaphysical energy of chi. It was slightly more arcane than a knight was used to using, but it worked he supposed. He was by no stretch of the imagination an expert, but he could form small chi bolts that, when matched with Aster’s natural accuracy with a crossbow, worked well as arrows.  
  
With more practice, Aster had learned how to use another ability that let him form an entire suit of knight’s armor around his body at a moment’s notice. It had twice the strength of normal steel armor, and only limited his movement to half the degree that normal armor would have.  
  
He trained continuously, refusing to forget the promise to win the tournament that he had made to his family. Even if they were gone now, he would fulfill the promise and make them proud.  
  
Through this determined training, Aster had learned a way to re-work his chi armor technique to enhance the power of his other attacks. He could form a sword blade or halberd pikes around his arm, or form the spikes of a morning star around his fist. These special chi attacks allowed him to bide his time, waiting until he had enough energy stored up to his final attack.  
  
He called it the Chivalrous Assault, as no matter how powerful it was, it always stopped short of killing a target, only ever knocking them out, regardless of if he used it on a grizzly bear or an ant. The ability summoned a sort of combat avatar made of chi around him in the form a knight. He could control it with his movements, and couldn’t be hurt while within it. The attack was strong enough was knock down a two story house.  
  
And he was certain he could use it to win the World Combat Tournament. And when he did, he would have more than enough money to get his family’s coat of arms back.  
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Conner Ostelle woke feeling safe and refreshed. How could he not considering where he lived? His bed was one of the softest ever made, and his mansion secure and had been built to last. It could take a bunker missile impact without a window cracking. It was the best that money could buy.  
  
Naturally, Conner didn’t leave his home whenever he was in training. He didn’t want to be bombarded by all of the drooling fans. More specifically, he didn’t want said drooling fans to see how exactly he trained.  
  
Conner was not a World Combat Tournament fighter by career like many others. No, he was a well known and respected actor. He had been in over three dozen movies, ten live plays, been a returning character on two on-going TV shows, and briefly been the star of his own show. Not to mention the voice work for animated productions and guest star appearances for various comedy and talk shows. He was known across the globe by several millions.  
  
So of course, when he announced his plans to participate in the World Combat Tournament, the media had gone insane. Much to Connor’s plan, the world ate up the idea of him fighting in the tournament. Now, the only really issue in the way of his brilliant plan was actually winning.  
  
He didn’t think it was much of an actual problem though, and not even because of his massive muscular body. As large and powerful as his body was, he had no actual physical combat techniques, which made him relatively useless in a fight. That is to say, it would have if he were not a highly skilled hypnotist.  
  
Conner had possessed the power of hypnosis ever since he was a child. It was a natural gift. He could, with only a few thoughts, make virtually any number of people see, hear, taste, or smell anything that he wanted them to with almost no effort at all. Making people experience specific sensations of touch had always been a tricky one, but it was still possible for him.  
  
He had fooled some of the highest ranking psychics and magic users with his talent when he was only fifteen years old. And his skills had only grown since then. He thanked the heavens for his born skill, knowing that his life would have turned out much, much differently without it.  
  
It had been his skills with hypnotism that had truly earned him such a lavish life. It certainly had not been his, in reality, truly poor acting skills. He had spent his life in a shroud of mental tricks to fool the world over into thinking he sounded incredible, moved gracefully, and never missed a line. He would have felt guilty about it, if it had not been so incredibly easy for him to do.  
  
  
And now he spent every day training his hypnosis to make his skill even stronger. He planned on mastered the art of making people experience pain at his command before the tournament began.  
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Marcus Cereperum woke up feeling just as stirred up as when he had gone to sleep the night before. He always felt stirred up. It was a side effect of his experiments, and as far as he was concerned, it was an acceptable loss all things considered. He got out of bed and swallowed three pills that, between the three of them, had all the nutrients and calories he needed for the entire day, eliminating the need to stop his work to do something as trivial as eat. Now his day was ready to start.

Marcus didn't have training so much as he had his scientific experiments. He was, and always had been, obsessed with chemicals. How they worked, what they could do, and most importantly to Marcus at current, how they could be controlled and used at one's own will.

It had taken his a few straight years of hard research to learn all that he had. He was far from done, but he could use what he had learned so far to win the World Combat Tournament so problem. The money he got from the victory would go into funding the continuation of his research.

Marcus had almost perfect control over the chemical makeup of his body, to a quite shocking degree. Aside from being able to heal from nearly any wound near instantly, and being able to increase the power of any and all bodily functions (strength, speed, senses, agility, durability, etc) for a brief period of time, he could also expel chemicals from his body, creating a haze that could trap and disorient even the most focused of his opponents. People always underestimated chemicals.

The ability that was Marcus' favorite was his ability to drive the mixture of chemicals directly into his brain. This chemical bath would send his mind into a dulled trance and let his body take over, ignoring all physical limitations and becoming aware of this his conscious mind couldn't.

It was perhaps a bit dangerous, as too long in this state could result in his body being pushed much, much too far beyond what it should be capable of and leaving him with permanent damage even he couldn't heal. Not to mention that staying in the chemical state for more than an hour could, potentially, liquify his brain. But again, it was an acceptable risk for what was to come.

This trance state, he supposed, was his 'special attack', as they were calling them these days. He saw no reason to name it though. Doing so would be just another waste of time, one of so many that distracted the world in these modern times. Such distractions annoyed and even sickened Marcus.

And this is something he planned to fix with his research after winning at the World Combat Tournament. By any means necessary, he would fix the world whether it wanted to be fixed or not.


	10. Will be deleted within a day or two

Sinful's finally gotten back to healthy sleeping/working patterns, hazah! Now which stories to work on... Ah! A poll! Not here on AO3 I'm afraid, as I need data for stories on FF as well. You'll have to be a Sinfulnature1123 patron to vote, so if you aren't one I suppose you'll simply have to wait and see what gets selected. Any story with this message is in the poll. From now on I'll be doing this every month (they'll start on the first or second starting next month) so you all can decide what you wanna see. I'll also probably have one story I personally wish to work on as well. In any event, the poll will close on the tenth. 'til then my lovely readers!


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